Continuing the story from the last post…

Okay so they make this extra long paint roller to apply the lacquer, and it is leaving some lines at the edge of the roller, so they decide to use a brush to smooth out the lines, but the problem is that with a 8 ft by 15 ft plane, how do you reach the middle parts without touching the board? Just fyi I highly recommend looking up the pictures (and soon to be a video posted as well) I have on facebook of this process because I cant do it justice describing it in words. So first they get my hammock hanging lines and try to tie Leo, one of the jovenes so that he can be supported to lean out over the boards to reach. But that doesn’t work, so theyre like oh here use a belt. Well I ended up giving them one of my cloth belts to use instead of the leather one one of the jovenes had. So he ties the belt around his waist and 2 of the other jovenes hold the belt while Leo leans over the map to reach the center. I’m sure you’re thinking that there are many many ways this could go wrong, I was too at the time. scenario 1: his feet (the pivot point) slip on my tile floor and he faceplants on the wet lacquer. Scenario 2: they can’t hold him and again, he faceplants on the wet lacquer. Scenario 3: the belt isn’t secure enough to hold his weight, he faceplants on the wet lacquer. Or scenario 4: it actually works. Well I was sitting there taking pictures the whole time, and laughing at them (it was one of the most amusing things I have seen here in Ecuador) and one time they were laughing and having a hard time holding him and I thought scenario 2 was a sure thing. His nose was about an inch from the map and he was flailing his arms, but one of the other jovenes stepped in and helped hoist him up. So it worked! But they were just having too much fun so they kept doing it again and again, which increased when another 8 jovenes showed up, this time just recreating for fun rather than function. Somehow though, they got the lacquer painted, albeit that they weren’t done until 1:30am Friday night, 8 hours before the event was to start! So I went to bed, slept terribly, and woke up with a headache from the smell of the lacquer in my house.

And wouldn’t you believe it, when I woke up at 7 Saturday morning we didn’t have power!! We hadn’t had a power outage in months and months, but of course. I figured it would only last an hour or so, so I just got dressed and decided to come home to shower later before the event actually started. So we started preparing for the event. First, we went to the park with the big tent (protection from the sun etc) and the jovenes set that up. Ok, and I kid you not, there were men in the park cutting down trees. They were taking huge branches off the trees, apparently cleaning up the park. It was unbelievable! We had filed a permit to use the park for the day, so we essentially had right of way, but they were like, yah we don’t care we have to trim the trees. But we stayed out of their way and just got covered with sawdust…

A couple other volunteers from Guayaquil came out for the event, so I met up with them in a park and they set up the booth from VIHDA, and organization based out of Guayaquil that works in HIV/AIDS prevention. I was really happy that they were able to come out to my site for the open house, plus it was good publicity for them since I live so close to the city and most people go to the city for testing and treatment. But so far, no other organizations had shown up – thank you hora ecuatoriana. And still no power. Then I came back to my house hoping to be able to shower (without power, I don’t have water) so we hung out here for a few minutes before heading back to the park. Still no power. Once at the park, we needed to go get the tshirts. One of the jovenes that works there had told me the night before that the shirts were all done, no worries we could come as early as 8am to pick them up. So one of the jovenes took me to the tshirt place, and wouldn’t you believe it, they only had 8 of 30 shirts done, with the event starting in half an hour. And it wasn’t just that the logos just needed to be painted on, but no they hadn’t even finished sewing a majority of the shirts. And still no power. So until the power came back, the sewing machines wouldn’t work. But we took the shirts that were ready and went back to the park. I was feeling a bit stressed at this point but having my fellow volunteers here really helped me keep cool. So back at the park, they had put up the 20 by 20 ft tent and several of the organizations had shown up, which was a huge relief. But there still wasn’t power, so the DJ hadn’t shown. Oh, and one of the TV stations from Guayaquil came out to shoot some coverage of the event for the news, so they were there and the press guy introduced me to the newscaster, at which point I introduced him to my host brother as the youth he was going to interview. I wasn’t planning on doing an interview as we’re generally discouraged from it and it made me nervous to be talking in Spanish in front of a camera. But anyway, I then went back to the tshirt place to see how things were going, and they had another 5 ready or something, but still no power. At this point it was maybe 11am and the event had started at 10am, so I was pretty upset with the tshirt people but played it cool. I think if I had let the shirt issue get to me I would have just lost it for the whole day so I just put a smile on my face and went back to the park. The open house was going great at that point. We had a good turnout from the community and each of the booths had information for the community. The groups that participated included: the health center with information on birth control and family planning (very good for the youth to learn about), the consejo cantonal de la ninez y adolescencia with information about children/youth rights, a group from the municipio (local government) that works with youth to develop public speaking and acting skills (there was a 15 yr old doing a beautiful monologue in front of about 100 people in the park), Movimiento Mi Cometa (the organization I work with) with information about their programs for families with children under age 5, Fundacion VIHDA with information on HIV/AIDS, and CAAM with information about agriculture/environmental education and an ecological park that they developed in a small town outside of my site. Then around 11:30 a woman came up to me and said her mom was looking for me for the refreshments. I had worked with an organization in my town to get them to donate a refreshment in exchange for helping them with some workshops with youth in the community, but I hadn’t seen anyone from that organization though they were supposed to be there. But I knew the woman who was preparing the refreshments, so me and one of the jovenes went to her house and picked up 100 hamburgers and 100 juices. She is such a sweet little lady, she had made 100 of everything and made an extra one free of charge specifically for me, which she insisted on watching me taste in front of her (she may have been trying to poison me haha). But we returned to the park with the food and it was like throwing candy at a parade – people were all over it and it was all distributed in minutes. The TV people were waiting for me when I got back though, saying “ok we’re ready to interview you now” so again I pushed one of the jovenes in front of them. They responded by saying “ok we will interview him on the event and how the community collaborated, and then we’ll interview you on the Peace Corps and what you’re doing here in Ecuador” Ok so I was super nervous now because I had tried to avoid him and trying any more would be considered seriously rude, so I had to give in. But the problem was that the volunteer leader for my program (a 3rd year volunteer that works in the office in Quito and travels around to help volunteers in their sites) was at the event taking photos and video footage, and as I said before Peace Corps is a little weird about volunteers talking to the media. So I was afraid of getting in trouble with PC as she was going to have pictures and video of me interviewing with a national TV station. But anyway, my host brother did his interview, then they asked me about my work etc. and I played it super safe, giving the standard response we were taught during training “Peace Corps is an organization that provides technical assistance in countries around the world. The mission of PC is to provide technical support in development, promote the culture and understanding of the US here in Ecuador, and promote the culture and understanding of Ecuador back in the US. PC Ecuador has 4 programs: agriculture, natural resources, community health, and youth and families and I am a volunteer of the youth and families program. I work in my site with jovenes and an organization called Mi Cometa doing community development blah blah blah” but I know I came across as really nervous. I was mostly nervous about getting in trouble with Peace Corps, then secondly about my Spanish. And I kept thinking, man I haven’t even gotten to shower today… Oh, and still no power. Around 12:30 the flow of people slowed down a bit so we decided to end and clean up the open house. At this point the power was back on (yay!!) but the tshirts were still not all finished. And the PCVL from the office wanted to interview me and my host brother about how the event was planned, etc. but I wanted to wait for my tshirt (I had a PC logo put on the sleeve and it looked really awesome). So we finally got the shirt and we did the interview, then phew it was time to relax briefly before getting ready for the concert that was starting at 6. However it was starting to cloud over and I predicted rain. Everyone told me I should just be positive, which I responded that I was just being realistic...

I came back to my house with one of the volunteers and we relaxed and ate brownies (good stress reliever) for awhile then needed to run to the store, so we went out. Well the jovenes had gone to the park to meet up with the DJ and do sound checks etc. And sure enough, it started pouring. I mean, pouring! It was one of the heaviest downpours I’ve ever seen. The streets instantly flooded, the mototaxis were splashing through 4 inch puddles, and we ran into the store to stay dry. Then I called my host brother to see what was happening at the park and he started explaining that there was a problem, so I said we would just come meet them at the park. By the time we got to the park, it was still raining but the downpour had stopped. But they explained that because the equipment and instruments got wet, they couldn’t be played for a couple of weeks. So unfortunately our backup of having the concert Sunday if it rained Saturday was also out the door. But there was nothing we could do at that point, so we packed up the equipment, cleaned up the park, and planned to reschedule for June when the rains are finally over. We had planned a little afterparty and someone suggested having a mini concert because the band still wanted to play. So I offered up my house (I have a garage door thing that would have worked to put the band inside and the door open with people out under the porch) but we ended up going to my host families house. They gathered up a couple of guitars and a drum set and an amp, and played a “mini concert” but at that point people were more interested in just having the party, so after a few songs they got out a stereo system and put away the instruments. I had prepared a huge pot of spaghetti sauce for the 15 person band that came from Guayaquil so they all came over and I made the noodles. They all ate the spaghetti and brownies, which ended up alllll over my floor haha. We went back to the party for awhile and it was really great getting to hang out with my jovenes – I had been stressed for several weeks and now I could relax and enjoy myself. Then me and the other vol came back to my house to use the bathroom but I sat down in the hammock and she sat in one of the chairs and we both knew it was over, no more party for us. We hung out for awhile then went to sleep. Apparently the party lasted until like 5am but I was so exhausted we were in bed by 12:30 :)

So the event didn’t go as planned, but I am really happy with it. A big part of the event was the collaboration between community organizations. Through the planning meetings we were able to make contacts in the community for collaboration on future projects and develop a network of organizations that work with youth in my site. And the concert is still going to happen, but we’re shooting for mid-june and it won’t be as big of an event because it won’t be happening with the other events for GYSD. We also had talked about painting a mural with the Consejo Cantonal de la Ninez y Adolescencia for GYSD but we ended up pushing that back for May 16th for lack of time April 24-25. But that will for sure still be happening next weekend.

I also worked with another organization to do a leadership workshop with community youth, including the Liceo de Lideres (youth group that I usually work with), some of the youth I tutor in English (their form of payment is to help me with projects/workshops when theyre available since I cant accept payment for the tutoring), and a group of high school students that have been selected as potential leaders. It was really great working with the high school aged kids. They have a very different attitude than the older youth and participate more actively, which was a nice change of pace. It was great getting to meet some of them and I am looking forward to working with them in the future. In addition to the leadership workshop last weekend, I'm collaborating with the same organization to plan another workshop with the same group in July. The cool thing about working with this organization is that they take care of the funding, the logistics (finding a location, providing refreshments, giving me supplies like markers and paper), and they have the means but not the methods to do the workshops. The woman I’ve been working with has so much work that she’s super excited to prepare the logistics and leave the workshops to me. She is required to do these workshops in the community, but I can tell she’s too busy to take interest in doing them personally, so theyre very excited to have me to take charge of that aspect. This is what counterpart organizations often are like so its not terribly unusual for most volunteers, but for me it’s such a refreshing change of pace – having an office etc. But I like the freedoms I have from my counterpart agency and have gotten used to the lack of structure, so for example changing to another counterpart agency that has an office and offers structure would not be my first choice at this point. Plus if I were to work with them they would definitely put me on paper-pushing duty. Much better to maintain the “outside contractor” sort of relationship.

Meanwhile life back home is continuing. The last friends I know in Kappa Delta (and at Wittenberg) will be graduating this year (congrats class of 2010!!) but it will be weird not knowing anyone in the house anymore. And my little brother just finished up his junior year, which seems totally unreal. My fellow 2008 grads, Wittenberg and NKU, are really getting into their grad programs and jobs, getting boyfriends, breaking up with boyfriends, and more shockingly, getting engaged/married like lightening. I just saw a couple pictures of cousins that will always be little kids in my mind, but in reality they’re entering middle school, high school, getting girlfriends/boyfriends, and even graduating from high school this year to start college next year, all of which I will be in Ecuador for. Family friends are getting married, having kids, changing jobs/houses, going to college/grad school. Next week my grandparents are moving from the house they’ve lived in for my whole life to a modern house in a subdivision. My siblings are all doing great things, working, studying and changing the world, one lab experiment/one bed at a time :) My parents have apparently planted a monstrous garden and are busy working and taking care of the insane dog, which I haven’t heard about in awhile, so I guess no news is good news haha. And meanwhile my life here continues. It blows my mind to think that May 17th I will have been in Ecuador for 11 months, in site for almost 9. I feel so comfortable with the friends I have made here and with the tranquilo life/workstyle I have developed, yet thinking about home and how life continues seems surreal. Every once in a while I have an eye opener when I find out someone close to me has made a big life change, marriage, job, school, etc. but otherwise its just easier to not think about it, to live life normally here. I have become comfortable here, not necessarily happy all of the time, but happy enough that I know this is where I belong right now. I have become very satisfied with my site and my work, and though it was tough when I first got here, I truly believe my programming staff put me in the perfect site for me. That’s not saying I don’t dislike aspects of my site (the heat, the bugs, some parts of the culture) but I feel integrated very well into my town. In fact, thinking of leaving Ecuador permanently is very difficult to think of. A lot of volunteers that I have talked to are at the same point as me right now. Many have even talked of extending for a 3rd year, which is something I too am neither considering nor ruling out at this point. Trying to make a decision when we aren’t even halfway through our 2 yrs is impossible, as so much can change in just weeks here. But looking at the number of people who extend statistically, the majority of us will at some point become tired of the culture, tired of the language, tired of the work, tired of the machismo, and ready to return to the states. So I wonder when that point comes, though I assume it is different for everyone. Only time will tell whether I hit that point sooner or later in my service, but it is an interesting concept to reflect about at this point in my service, and something I want to record for myself and you all. There is your deep reflection for the month, hope you enjoyed it :)

Alright, I think I’m all done writing, and I’m sure you are all done reading, so until another day, peace.